Bear Faced Bloggery

  I don't have any exciting writing news to impart, I'm afraid... things seem to have gone a little quiet on that front, though I am still putting fingers to keyboard, even if somewhat intermittently. Those of you who follow this blog will be only too aware that my ability to write is directly bound up with the ebb and flow of my grief following the death of my wife, the first year of which I documented in my memoir 'Precious Dreams and Living Nightmares' (still available on Amazon or direct from me if you'd like to read it... link here ). I have just passed through the third anniversary of her death, and was prompted to listen again to a piece I had  recorded on my phone a year ago, immediately after the second anniversary. Those who have read the aforementioned memoir will know that it takes the form of recordings I made during that first year (effectively a journal) annotated with my reflections on those recordings from the position of hindsight. I had initially ...

  This is the week when the book documenting my first year of grief goes live, and it is a bittersweet experience. As those few hardy individuals who follow this occasional blog will know, It takes the form of transcriptions of my thoughts and feelings - originally set down on my phone's voice recorder - throughout those first awful twelve months, accompanied by a commentary of sorts, observations written with the hindsight afforded by revisiting the recordings as that first year drew to a close. What it has become is the memoir that I never dreamed I would have to write.  It was never meant for public consumption but rather formed part of my ongoing therapy, and as such is about as raw and honest an account as you could ever hope to find. It pulls no punches, and tears my soul each time I read it back. Yet I made the decision to publish for three reasons:  Firstly, many of the books on grief that I read throughout this period (and there were plenty) felt somewhat sanitis...

  So, the little book on grief that I spoke about in my last blog post is all but finished (as far as these things ever can be...). It's been an incredibly tough 18 months since my devastating bereavement, during which time I have taken part in 2 bereavement courses, had two rounds of counselling/therapy, read countless books on the subject, have been supported throughout by a wonderful peer support worker, and am booked onto a grief 'retreat' this coming November... so no one can say I haven't grabbed hold of every bit of help and support that I've been offered. And yes, things have improved, but I am no nearer being able to function as I used to, am still floundering through what passes for my life, and still searching for answers that I will probably never find. I'm afraid that I'm having to come to terms with the fact that I am no longer the same person as I was pre-bereavement, and that life, to use a well-worn cliché, will never be the same. However, d...

 The year is turning... 2023 becomes 2024 in a single tick of the clock... yet nothing changes, for all our drunken resolutions and best intentions. Everything that occupies our hearts and minds on December 31st will still be foremost in our thoughts on January 1st. The same wars will rage, the same injustices perpetrated. Joy and sorrow, violence and frustration, love and loss, depression and anguish... they will all run on from one day into the next, across the dateline that separates the old year from the new.  Jolly little soul aren't I? January is, of course, named for the two-faced god Janus - not two-faced in our modern sense, but able to see simultaneously forward and backward, and so it is natural that New Year's Eve should be a time of both reflection and anticipation. For those that know me, or follow this intermittent blog, you will understand that 2023 has been a year that I am all too happy to put behind me, and any reflection that I may be engaged in as the worl...

  My last post on this blog was in March, and was pretty optimistic and upbeat in tone. Well, what a difference a month makes... for in April my world crashed and burned. Before I continue, I want to say that I have not written what follows out of any sense of self-pity, neither do I seek to elicit pity from others, nor to justify these words by hoping that others in a similar position may find comfort in them (though should that prove to be the case, I wish you well, fellow traveller along this darkest of roads - you are not alone). Rather I am writing as nothing more than a form of therapy for myself, to try to express a little of what I have been holding inside over these last few months. Nothing more, nothing less. So what's it all about?  For those that don't know, April was when I lost my best friend, my soulmate, and the love of my life... and the darkness closed in. Since then, I have been struggling to make sense of a life which seems directionless and empty. One of t...